Marino Massimo De Caro

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Marino Massimo De Caro (* 1973 in Italy ) is an Italian antiquarian , librarian , impostor and art forger who has been significantly involved in one of the largest international antiquarian book frauds in recent times. The holdings of the Biblioteca dei Girolamini in Naples were systematically plundered.

Professional background

De Caro does not have a completed academic education, but in the past he emerged in the scientific public with a two-volume art-historical study on Galileo Galilei and established Galileo researchers such as B. Horst Bredekamp and Nick Wilding , not unknown. In April 2011 De Caro was appointed special advisor by the Italian Minister of Culture Giancarlo Galan , to whom he was already an energy advisor when he was still Minister of Agriculture, and in December 2011 by his successor Lorenzo Ornaghi .

Director of the Biblioteca dei Girolamini 2011 and 2012

Finally, in June 2011, the Ministry of Culture officially appointed him director of the state Biblioteca dei Girolamini , the oldest library in Naples, through the intermediary of Berlusconi's confidante Marcello Dell'Utri . It houses an important historical book collection. Immediately after taking over the office of director, De Caro had large parts of the book inventory rearranged, ostensibly in order to have the shelves cleared of woodworms as part of renovation work. Prosecutors and investigative authorities believe, however, that the action was intended solely to cover up a large-scale theft, in which rows of index cards and inventory lists were destroyed, and thousands of books were stolen and illegally sold.

In spring 2012 the art historian Tomaso Montanari visited the Biblioteca dei Girolamini. Startled by the scandalous condition of the library, he informed the public and reported in detail in an article in the daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano about the neglect of the facility. The investigations that followed revealed the extensive fraud case and an international network of accomplices, intermediaries and other parties involved, and De Caro was arrested, see details of the theft in the Biblioteca dei Girolamini . On the German side, the affair led to the arrest of the managing director Herbert Schauer of the Munich auction house Zisska, Schauer & Co. on August 2, 2013.

As a result, De Caro was blamed for the disappearance of thousands of volumes - including centuries-old editions of Aristotle , Descartes , Galileo and Machiavelli - and charged. He got away with the relatively mild sentence of 7 years of house arrest. The Italian public prosecutor then had to clarify how a case of fraud of this magnitude could take place “under the eyes of the Italian Ministry of Culture”.

De Caro also admitted to stealing books from a nearby convent and from the library of the monastery of Montecassino. Among the 600 books confiscated in Munich were a first edition of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius , one of Kepler's Astronomia Nova and two copies of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium . The estimated value of the books was 2.4 to 3 million euros. They first came to Rome in 2015. Not all of them had been stolen from Naples, two libraries in Florence were also affected and the origin of one Copernicus edition was still unclear in 2015. Schauer was sentenced to five years imprisonment in Naples in 2015, against which he appealed.

The special edition of the Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei

In 2005 De Caro sold a special edition of the book Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei , which contained original ink drawings, to the respected antiquarian Richard Lan of the New York antiquarian bookshop Martayan Lan . Richard Lan then turned to the world's leading Galileo researchers to clarify the question of the authenticity of the book edition. In 2007 Horst Bredekamp's monograph Galilei der Künstler was published , which was based on this sensational find and in which the previously unknown ink drawings were attributed to Galilei. After a thorough examination, including material studies, this edition was found to be genuine by a scientific team headed by Horst Bredekamp. According to Bredekamp's hymnically acclaimed monograph in the German feuilletons, Galileo's drawings of the moon and the sun through the telescope revealed that the style of the representations determined the meaning of what is depicted. H. Galileo's art of drawing is to be understood as an essential instrument of his research, and Galileo's scientific process of knowledge was practically carried out during artistic drawing. After the fraud surrounding the Biblioteca dei Girolamini became public, the science historian Nick Wilding was able to prove, on the basis of forensic evidence, that Bredekamp et al. a. as an authentically identified copy of the Sidereus Nuncius is a forgery that was allegedly brought into the US antiques trade by De Caro.

According to the art historian Horst Bredekamp, ​​this fraud was “De Caro's most skilful forgery known to date”; For the deceived scientists it was a bitter experience "how a highly specialized team of forgers was able to conceal its manipulations so deceptively real". On the other hand, Paul Needham, a colleague from the Bredekamps research group, who was also fooled by De Caro's special edition, made the following assessment: “Is it a clever forgery? I am not convinced, despite being someone who managed to be fooled by both its printing and its paper. I am happier in saying that this reflects poorly on me than it reflects well on the makers. "

Further career

While still under house arrest, De Caro was arrested in April 2016 for shoplifting in Verona.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Elisabetta Povoledo: At Root of Italy Library's Plunder, a Tale of Entrenched Practices , The New York Times on August 11, 2012, accessed January 1, 2014
  2. ↑ Marino Massimo de Caro, Dario Parisato, Paola Pugliese (editors): Galileo Galilei: le sue idee, il suo mondo, la collezione , 2 volumes, Verona 2007
  3. ↑ Marcello Dell'Utri, in turn, ran the Biblioteca del Senato in Milan , organized the country's most important antiquarian book fair for years and had already been convicted in two instances for mafia connections. In 2015 he was therefore imprisoned in Parma.
  4. ↑ Henning Klüver : Bock and Librarian , Süddeutsche Zeitung on August 17, 2012, accessed on January 2, 2014
  5. ↑ Investigations against auctioneer: Unter Verdacht , FAZ on August 23, 2013, accessed on February 1, 2014
  6. ↑ See also the Association of German Antiquaries , last accessed on January 2, 2014
  7. ↑ In the stars is currently house arrest , FAZ on April 22, 2014, accessed on April 27, 2014
  8. ^ Brita Sachs, The Return of Books, FAZ, February 25, 2015
  9. ↑ Rachel Donadio: Rare Books Vanish, With a Librarian in the Plot: Unraveling Huge Thefts From Girolamini Library in the Naples New York Times , November 29, 2013, accessed January 2, 2014
  10. ↑ Markus Becker: Galileo's first images of the moon discovered , Der Spiegel on March 30, 2007, accessed on December 30, 2013
  11. ^ Horst Bredekamp: Galileo the artist. The moon, the sun, the hand , Berlin, Akademie 2007
  12. ↑ Irene Brückle, Oliver Hahn, Paul Needham, Horst Bredekamp (eds.), Galileo's O , Akademie Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-005095-9
  13. ↑ Achatz von Müller : Oh, beautiful moon Die Zeit , June 21, 2007, accessed on December 30, 2013
  14. ↑ Andrea Albrecht , Giovanna Cordibella, Volker Remmert (organizers), final report for the DFG Villa Vigoni discussion "Inkwell and Telescope" - Galileo Galilei at the intersection of scientific, literary and visual cultures in the European 17th century , seminar from 2nd to 5th September 2012, accessed January 2, 2014
  15. ↑ Nicholas Schmidle: “A Very Rare Book”. The mystery surrounding a copy of Galileo's pivotal treatise , The New Yorker , December 16, 2013, p. 62
  16. ↑ Stephan Speicher: Behind the Moon , Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 21, 2013, p. 11
  17. ↑ Hanno Rauterberg: The fake moon , Die Zeit , December 27, 2013, accessed on December 29, 2013
  18. ↑ Horst Bredekamp: Das Lehrstück des Sternenbot , Die Zeit, January 9, 2014, accessed on February 1, 2014
  19. ↑ In German, for example: “Is [the special edition of the Star Messenger] a clever forgery? I am not convinced of this, although I am one of those who was fooled by both the print and the paper of the counterfeit. I would rather say that it throws a bad light on me than a good one on the counterfeiters. ”From: H. Bredekamp, ​​I. Brückle, P. Needham (eds.). Chapter VIII: Final Thoughts . P. 95: A Galileo Forgery. Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius (Galileo's O, Vol. III), Berlin, De Gruyter 2014
  20. ↑ http://www.veronasera.it/cronaca/massimo-de-caro-arresto-rapina-impropria-esselunga-biblioteca-girolamini-peculato-domiciliari-20-aprile-2016.html
personal data
SURNAME De Caro, Marino Massimo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian antiquarian, librarian, impostor and art forger
DATE OF BIRTH 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Italy